Scott's Weekly Greeting, September 22, 2020

Author: Rev. Scott W. Cousineau
September 22, 2020

Scott's Weekly Greeting ...

I was one of those kids that liked school growing up. I had an inquisitive mind and I liked learning new things. I still do. Of course, school also brought out the competitive part of my nature. Exams were a competition and I wanted to win! So my inquisitiveness and my competitiveness combined forces and made me a pretty good student.

However, there were some aspects of school with which I struggled. Being quite shy, I did not enjoy doing presentations in front of the class. I was not a fan of the square dancing sessions in our physical education classes. Dancing is definitely NOT one of my gifts. And I did not like group projects. Although I am a social person, group projects were difficult. Group projects only work when all members of the group work together.

When I was in high school, one of my English teachers assigned a group writing assignment. There were three of us in my group, and the teacher allowed us to choose any music group or band and write about them. Ironically, my friend Tommy suggested that we do The Who! I had no objection to The Who, so that was our subject.

We began work on the assignment by dividing up the members of the band and deciding who would research who in The Who. We also decided how often and when we would meet as a group. Tommy and I faithfully attended our group meetings, but our third member did not. In fact, he never attended. He did not attend a sing meeting after that first session.

Obviously, that was frustrating for the two faithful members of the group. We did not think that It was fair that we were doing all of the work, and that the third member would get credit for all of our efforts. So ... we devised a plan. We changed our music group selection. If member #3 had been at the meeting, he would have known. But he was not there.

On the day of our presentation in front of the class, Tommy and I were curious to see what would happen. Our group was called forward, and group member three began by introducing our topic ... "All About The Who." At that point we interrupted and said that we would actually be talking about The Kinks! Whoops! The presentation went as you might expect. It was awkward and uncomfortable, and Number Three was not happy.

Neither was our teacher. When our grades came out, we failed. Despite the detailed work that Tommy and I did on The Kinks ... we failed. As it turned out, our teacher did not care as much about the quality of our research. The point of the exercise was to work as a team. We failed as a team.

It can be difficult working as a team. That difficulty is only exacerbated by lack of communication. Tommy and I never checked with Number Three to see why he was not attending our meetings. We never asked. We failed.

In our worship service this week, we will continue our exploration of the Creation Story. In the beginning, God created. And then God called. God called us to be partners, and God calls us still. What does it mean to be God's partners? How do we live up to such an awesome responsibility?

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